Search
Scripture Reading: Gen. 2:7; Zech. 12:1; Job 32:8; Prov. 20:27; Isa. 57:15; Ezek. 36:26-27; John 3:6; 4:24; Rom. 8:16; 1 Cor. 15:45; 2 Cor. 3:17; 1 Cor. 6:17; 2 Tim. 4:22; John 6:63
Zechariah 12:1 shows us that in the eyes of God there are three great things in this universe: the heavens, the earth, and man. In the universe God pays attention to the heavens, the earth, and the spirit of man. Therefore, do not despise yourself. You have a spirit within you, and your spirit is ranked with the heavens and the earth. God needs the heavens and the earth, and even more He needs your spirit. If we see how important our human spirit is, we will be very excited.
Why does God consider the human spirit as important as the heavens and the earth? It is because the human spirit is a vessel to contain God. The heavens are for the earth. Without the heavens, the earth could not survive. The things we enjoy on earth, such as sunshine and rain, come from the heavens. Furthermore, the earth is for man. Things brought forth by the earth, such as crops, are suitable to meet man’s needs for his survival. But the most precious thing in man is his spirit. The human spirit is for God; it is used to contain God. The heavens are for the earth, the earth is for man, and man is for God.
Man has a spirit. Many people, including even Christians, do not know that there is a spirit in them. We must pay attention to the spirit of man. To eat food, you cannot use your eyes, ears, or nose; you must use your mouth. The mouth is the organ for eating. In order for man to eat, God created the eating organ, the mouth, in a marvelous way: the lips for sucking, the teeth for grinding, the tongue for pushing, and the saliva for mixing; all are for eating food. The Lord Jesus said that He is the bread of life. By this we see that God Himself is our food. Then which organ do we use to eat the Lord? The spirit! The human spirit is the organ for us to eat the Lord. God created a spirit for us so that we may eat Him, enjoy Him, and receive Him into us. Hallelujah! We have within us a stomach to contain physical food and a spirit to contain spiritual food, which is God Himself!
What is the spirit? Where is the spirit? This is hard to explain. It is even difficult to know our heart. How many hearts do we have? We have a biological heart and a psychological heart. Not only is God a mystery, but even you and I are mysteries. Some of the most precious things are very mysterious. For example, electricity, life, and atomic energy are mysterious and even invisible, yet they are real. Within us the most mysterious thing is the spirit.
What really is the spirit? It is hard for the mind to understand; we can know the spirit only by experience. For instance, many times our mind reasons out a certain matter, and our will is also in agreement, but deep within us there is something troubling us. That something is a mysterious thing, which is unexplainable, and that is the story of the spirit. Take another case: When a man is poor, all he needs is clothing, food, and shelter, and all he thinks about is how to make money. After he becomes rich and all these material necessities are fully supplied, then he feels the need for recreation and amusement, such as music and sports. Yet after all these needs have been met, he still feels an emptiness deep within him. Then one day he calls, “O Lord Jesus!” It is then that he is satisfied within. This deepest need is neither physical nor psychological but spiritual. Only God can satisfy this need. This need is evidence that we have a spirit within us.
Now let us talk about prayer. There are at least two kinds of prayer. The first kind is to pray with the intellect or the mind. The words of your prayer may be correct, but because you pray with the wrong organ, your prayer is not effective. If you ask a professor of psychology to pray, he might pray and pray, going round and round in his mind; eventually, he may even pray God away. This is because the human mind cannot contact God, just as a piece of wood cannot make electrical contact. If one is willing to call, “O Lord,” then the Spirit will come, and he will touch God. Therefore, the second kind of prayer is to pray with the spirit. We all must exercise to make our spirit strong.
Christianity teaches people to pray to an objective God, a God who is high above on the throne, begging Him to have pity on them and to do things for them. This kind of religious prayer by religious teaching is altogether in the mind. True prayer is to pray with your spirit in order to contact the subjective Lord, who is in you and with your spirit. Today He is not only sitting high above on the throne, but He is also dwelling in your spirit in a lowly way. Therefore, when you pray to Him, you should not only make requests of Him, but you should touch and contact Him. This kind of prayer for contacting Him is to pray not with the mind but with the spirit.
The Lord said that He is the bread of life and that we have to eat Him. How do we eat Him? It is not by considering Him with our mind but by calling “O Lord!” with our spirit. Suppose your husband or your wife or a brother or a sister insults you, provoking you to anger. This will stir up your mind to think, “How unreasonable this is! How can he do this to me?” Then your whole being will be usurped by the mind, and even though you pray, you will not be able to touch the Lord. Therefore, we must learn how to contact the Lord with our spirit. The Lord is Spirit. To contact Him, who is Spirit, we must use our spirit. He as the Spirit is in our spirit. In our spirit there is a mutual fellowship and a mingling of the two spirits.
Brothers and sisters, it is a fact that we have a spirit within us. Our spirit is different from our mind, our emotion, and our heart. The Bible does not tell us to walk according to the heart; instead, it tells us to walk according to the spirit. We need to follow the spirit, to walk according to the spirit.
I often tell people that today you may love a person but in the future you may hate him. Those whom you hate are usually those whom you have loved. Without marriage there cannot be divorce. Why is it that love can turn into hate? It is because this love was from the emotion, or at most it was only from the heart. The heart is so unreliable; it changes faster than the weather in Taipei. Therefore, all the wives need to know that none of the husbands are trustworthy, and all the husbands need to know that none of the wives are truly gentle. A wife might be gentle in this hour, but in the next hour she will strongly lose her temper. This proves that the human heart is not trustworthy; it is capricious. But, praise the Lord, there is one thing that is constant, and that is our spirit. If you love someone with your spirit, your love will not change. Whether or not he loves in return or if he is good or bad, you will still love him.
Our spirit was created uniquely and especially for us by God. I would like to tell you something that we know from our experience, though it is not explicitly mentioned in the Scripture. The fact is that because man fell, his spirit is now influenced by his soul. However, it seems that God has drawn a line and said to Satan, “Don’t go beyond this point.” It is as though God said, “You can enter into man’s body and usurp man’s soul, but you cannot enter into man’s spirit. His spirit is off limits to you.” Therefore, whenever you return to your spirit, you get out of Satan’s realm. If you remain in your mind instead of returning to your spirit, you will enter the kingdom of Satan and be under his control. Therefore, we must learn to turn to our spirit. Regardless of what people say to you, your mind should not dwell on what they say; regardless of how much people are angry with you and try to provoke you, you still must return to your spirit. Hallelujah, as long as you remain in your spirit, Satan cannot do anything to you!
Moreover, when you remain in your spirit, you are in fellowship with God. When you contact the Lord in this way, He will flow more abundantly into you to be your supply. In this way you can eat and enjoy the Lord.
Now we will consider the matter of reading the Bible. We know that there are two ways to read the Bible. The first way is to read with our mind; this is the common way. The more we read with the mind, the more deadened we become. The more we read like this, the drier and emptier we are and the more depressed we become. Then what is the right way to read the Scriptures? It is by the second way, which is to read with our spirit. After reading a sentence, you call, “O Lord Jesus!” By calling on the Lord while reading, you receive all the words of the Scriptures into you as life.
The Lord said, “It is the Spirit who gives life...the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (John 6:63). Therefore, we cannot receive the word with our mind; we must contact the word with our spirit. The word is spirit, and we touch the word by our spirit. When we pray with our spirit and read the Word with our spirit, we absorb and receive the Lord abundantly into our spirit.
At the time of our believing, the Lord regenerated our spirit, changing our old spirit into a new spirit. From that time onward the Spirit of the Lord has been remaining in our spirit; that is, the two spirits have now become one spirit and witness together. Today this spirit in us is a mingled spirit, a wonderful spirit, and a rich spirit. You simply need to learn to turn to your spirit and to exercise your spirit moment by moment; then spontaneously you will touch the Lord Himself. As a result, you will enjoy the riches of the Lord. Hallelujah! You have a spirit! Exercise your spirit!
